Point & Shoot Street

Another day and another Walkie Talkie by Paule B this time with New York street photographer Sean Fryxell.

Photo by Sean Fryxell

Fryxell is an interesting guy to follow. He’s got a great Flickr site and he’s on Instagram.

This Paulie B video is really educational when it comes to Fryxell describing his form of street photograpy.

Going against the Leica film trend in street photography, Fryxell shoots with a digital FujiFilm X100V and a small Godox Lux Junior flash. For someone who walks upwards of 20 miles in a day shooting in New York a light small camera setup is a must.

But when shooting with a fixed focal length approximating a 35mm (in full frame terms) lens and a small flash that adds “pop” to almost every image there is a tendenacy for his photo galleries to have a familiar “same” sort of look to every shot.

I’m not saying a lot or even most of his images aren’t really good (I base my evaluation of good as something I’d be happy to have shot myself) and some are amazing (as in I’m not sure I could have pulled that off) but the limitations of direct flash, fixed lens and point-and-shoot setup can make for a sameness I find…well let’s call it challenging.

But challenging or not this compact setup can be assembled by anyone interested in creating arresting street photography images without having to buy a ton of heavy and expensive gear and a bag of lenses.

There are a lot of street photographers who shoot with either older film cameras (I shoot mainly black and white film with a Nikon FM2, a Nikon FE and a Nikkormat usually with either a 28, 35 or 50 mm lens. A near mint condition Nikon film camera can be had on E-Bay from Japanese dealers for under $300 Cdn with lens.)

I now have a very simple very compact Olympus Trip 35 film camera that you can carry in a jacket pocket, needs no batteries and yet shoots in auto mode and can fire a simple flash.

Have a look at the images of this remarkable and talented photographer and watch Paulie B’s video interview and see what you think. Is this for you?